rabble.ca - colonial violencehttps://rabble.ca/category/tags/colonial-violence
enCalling someone 'Pocahontas' is actually a compliment, not an insulthttps://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/11/calling-someone-pocahontas-actually-compliment-not-insult
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/anti-racism">Anti-Racism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous Rights</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/us-politics">US Politics</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/Pocahontas_by_Simon_van_de_Passe.jpg?itok=uT5jtif6" width="1180" height="600" alt="Image: Simon van de Passe/Wikimedia Commons" title="Image: Simon van de Passe/Wikimedia Commons" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>President Donald Trump has the most powerful bully pulpit in the world. Sadly, he uses it to do just that: to bully, to demean, to wreak havoc. On Monday, he met in the Oval Office with three of the surviving 13 Navajo Code Talkers, ostensibly to honor them for their courageous service in World War II. As young men, they were recruited into the U.S. Marines to use their native Navajo language in the war against Japan. They used 600 Navajo words, each of which had a code meaning useful in combat communications. They are credited with helping the U.S. win key battles like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. In the space of a few minutes, though, Trump veered off message:</p>
<p>"You were here long before any of us were here," Trump said, addressing the Navajo men, all in their 90s. "Although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her 'Pocahontas.' But you know what, I like you because you are special. You are special people."</p>
<p>Trump's dig was directed at Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and her belief based on family lore that she has some Cherokee ancestry. There is no evidence that she ever used the claim to advance her career. Her unverified lineage became an issue in her 2012 senatorial campaign, and Trump, perceiving her as a potential challenger in 2020, has repeatedly called her "Pocahontas."</p>
<p>To add insult to injury, the backdrop of the Oval Office ceremony with the Navajo veterans was a portrait of President Andrew Jackson that Trump had installed upon assuming the presidency. During his two terms, from 1829-1837, President Jackson, known as "Indian Killer" and "Sharp Knife," accelerated the removal of native tribes from the southeastern U.S., with forced marches to reservations west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Native Americans died. These death marches would become known as the "Trail of Tears."</p>
<p>If Trump were a reader of history, he might know that calling someone "Pocahontas" is actually a compliment, not an insult. Pocahontas was a real person who displayed courage and conviction in her very short life. She was born around 1595 in the Tidewater region of what is now called Virginia, and was named Matoaka, then nicknamed Pocahontas. Her father was named Powhatan, which also was the name of the affiliation of 30 or so Algonquin tribes in the region. According to one account, she saved English colonist John Smith from execution in 1607. In 1995, Disney released a blockbuster animated film based on that story.</p>
<p>"Most Americans at this point understand her as a Disney character," Mary Kathryn Nagle told us on the <em>Democracy Now!</em> news hour. Nagle is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and an attorney who works to restore tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction. "Her real true story has been commodified and retold in a false narrative that celebrates her union with her abuser. She was a survivor of a form of violence, of colonial violence, at a time when native women were primary targets, because the colonial powers who came over here from 1492 and even past 1776 knew that a primary way of destroying a tribal nation, an Indigenous nation, is to attack the women."</p>
<p>Matoaka, or Pocahontas, actively sought peace between her Indigenous people and the white, European colonists. In 1613, she was kidnapped and held prisoner at Jamestown. During captivity, she converted to Christianity and later married John Rolfe, a prominent tobacco grower. Rolfe took her to England, where she died at the age of 20 or 21. She was buried in Gravesend, England, and her remains have never been located.</p>
<p>The abduction of Matoaka/Pocahontas has current parallels. The disappearance of native women from the oil boom fields of North Dakota and the Canadian tar sands region is an ongoing and underreported epidemic. Olivia Lone Bear, a 32-year-old mother of five from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota, has been missing since October 24. She is just one of hundreds who have gone missing.</p>
<p>Imagine if Trump used his vast Twitter following to assist in the search for Olivia. Instead, Trump retweets anti-Muslim videos put out by an extreme right-wing racist group from the U.K., attacks African-American athletes for their civil-rights protests, and supports Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, accused of child molestation and serial sexual harassment of teenage girls. Meanwhile, Trump himself stands accused of sexual harassment and assault by no less than 16 women.</p>
<p>Pocahontas died 400 years ago this year. Let's remember her name, not because it is invoked by a powerful man who preys on the vulnerable, but to inspire action, advancing Indigenous rights and women's rights.</p>
<p><em>This column was first published on </em><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/30/pocahontas_is_an_inspiration_not_a_racial" target="_blank">Democracy Now!</a></p>
<p><em>Image: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pocahontas_by_Simon_van_de_Passe.jpg" target="_blank">Simon van de Passe/Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/pocahontas">Pocahontas</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/21186">racism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/mmiw-0">#MMIW</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-histories">colonial histories</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7606">democracy now!</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/38364">Amy Goodman</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/bios/denis-moynihan">Denis Moynihan</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">November 30, 2017</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2016/10/indigenous-london-re-imagines-colonial-telling-londons-past" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;Indigenous London&#039; re-imagines colonial telling of London&#039;s past</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">University of British Columbia professor Coll Thrush&#039;s work reveals Indigenous history at the centre of an empire.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/making-it-count/2011/04/ignorance-and-slurs-indigenous-election-coverage">Ignorance and slurs: Indigenous election coverage</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Every election, there are important reminders of the ignorance and racism Indigenous people face each day in Canada.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2010/02/reel-injun-real-interesting" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reel Injun is real interesting</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Documentary explores the history of how Native Americans have been portrayed on film, from silent screen to Atanarjuat.</div></div></div>Fri, 01 Dec 2017 03:22:06 +0000rabble staff139191 at https://rabble.cahttps://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/11/calling-someone-pocahontas-actually-compliment-not-insult#comments'Dying from Improvement' exposes the politics of colonial inquests and inquirieshttps://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/03/dying-improvement-exposes-politics-colonial-inquests-and-inquiries
<div class="field field-name-field-related-item1 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2014/03/clearing-plains-confronts-canadas-colonialism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;Clearing the Plains&#039; confronts Canada&#039;s colonialism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> Author James Daschuk discusses Canada&#039;s history of disease, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing, tar sands expansion, neglect of treaties and a legacy of colonialism of First Nations. </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/11/indigenous-nationhood-speaks-truth-canada-needs-to-hear"> &#039;Indigenous Nationhood&#039; speaks a truth that Canada needs to hear </a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> Dr. Pamela Palmater has brought a critical analysis and discussion to issues facing Indigenous populations in Canada like no other writer of her time. Her new book is an absolute must read. </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/02/capitalism-must-die-order-indigenous-nations-to-live" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Capitalism must die in order for Indigenous nations to live</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-title-of-book field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The Canadian government&#039;s treatment of Indigenous people both historically and presently makes one thing clear: It only wants a relationship of taking land and resources.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-autho-of-book field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sherene H. Razack</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/28107662.jpg?itok=Ez8u2B90" width="1180" height="600" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-publisher-of-book field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">University of Toronto Press</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/36413">Jesse McLaren</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-published-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">2014</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-dek field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">&quot;To develop relationships of genuine reciprocity with Indigenous peoples, we non-Indigenous peoples must embark on this anti-colonial journey.&quot;</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">March 10, 2016</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous Rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/arts-culture">Arts &amp; Culture</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/civil-liberties-watch">Civil Liberties Watch</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-price-of-book field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">$32.95</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/slug/indigenous">Indigenous</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p><em>Like this article? rabble is reader-supported journalism. <a href="https://secure.rabble.ca/donate/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Chip in</a> to keep stories like these coming.</em></p>
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<p>As we shift from a Harper government that denied Canada's history of colonialism to a Trudeau government that has launched an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, Sherene Razack's new book is a must-read to navigate the changing tactics of the Canadian state and support ongoing resistance.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.utppublishing.com/Dying-from-Improvement-Inquests-and-Inquiries-into-Indigenous-Deaths-in-Custody.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><em>Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody</em></a> examines investigations in B.C. and Saskatchewan that the state only granted because Indigenous communities demanded them for years, but that were turned into justifications for ongoing colonialism.</p>
<p>Writing an academic book in an accessible style, Razack exposes the colonial violence that inquests and inquiries ignore -- which doom recommendations to be repeatedly made and ignored until the material basis of colonialism is confronted.</p>
<p><strong>Colonizing land and bodies</strong></p>
<p>Leaving the statistics until the end, Razack highlights the lives of Indigenous people who have died in custody.</p>
<p>Paul Alphonse, a residential school survivor, died with broken ribs and a boot print on his chest but his cause of death was listed as pneumonia and alcohol withdrawal.</p>
<p>Frank Paul froze to death in an alley way after being dropped off by police, and was dismissed as an alcoholic.</p>
<p>Anthany Dawson died while being forcibly restrained by police but his cause of death was medicalized as "excited delirium" and a genetic mutation.</p>
<p>Katie Ross, whose family called police and brought her to hospital after being shot, died from the wound after medical personnel failed to properly examine her and instead diagnosed her as anxious.</p>
<p>Neil Stonechild and others froze to death after police dumped them outside Saskatoon.</p>
<p>As Razack describes, these deaths are not accidental but are the result of ongoing colonialism. As part of its project to colonize Indigenous land, the Canadian settler state marks Indigenous bodies as a frontier to be policed, bodies that are pathologized as only responding to force and whose deaths are dismissed as symptoms of a dying race.</p>
<p>If homeless people in general are subject to constant regulation and police harassment to purge them from public space, there's a specific colonial drive to police Indigenous bodies in order to continually dispossess them of their land.</p>
<p><strong>The contradiction of inquiries</strong></p>
<p>In all these cases of deaths in custody, the families and broader community fought for years to bring justice, forcing the state to announce an inquiry. Drawing on historical inquiries from India to Canada, Razack exposes their contradictions -- which acknowledge violence towards Indigenous peoples but try to blame them rather than the colonial state:</p>
<blockquote><p>"They work hard to suture the ruptures that have given rise to them in the first place. That is to say, inquiries must resolve the contradiction between rescuing Natives and suppressing the evidence of settler and police violence towards people who are assume to be less than human…An inquiry is also a site of anxiety, the stage for a restless and uneven performance of empire. British colonial inquiries into Indian indentureship revealed a constant anxiety around the freedom of colonized populations."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To resolve this contradiction, inquiries present Indigenous peoples as pathologically weak and vulnerable -- as opposed to oppressed and colonized -- thereby masking the state's ongoing violence and presenting it a benevolent:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The inquest or the inquiry is tailor-made to present both the story of the disappearance of a race <em>and</em> the story of white settlers assisting Indigenous people into modernity. They occupy a specific site in colonial law, one devoted to that most quintessential of colonial activities: the improvement of the colonized, or, in an old phrase, the civilizing mission… The disappearance of the Native is often and paradoxically accomplished through a gesture of inclusion, the moment when the settler state announces that it has not forgotten its Indians and means to assist them into modernity…Rescue displaces the fact of colonial violence and pre-empts discourses of land rights, heritage, and culture.""</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Razack summaries the typical narrative of inquiries:</p>
<blockquote><p>"First, the violence of colonialism, considered safely in the past, is recognized, although it is often described not as violence but as misjudgment. Second, Indigenous peoples are considered to have been deeply damaged and rendered dependent on colonialism. Third, the police and others respond to the damaged populations they deal with professionally, but also inefficiently and arrogantly. Fourth, Indigenous peoples have to be helped to recover from colonization, and the police have to be more culturally sensitive as they assist them to do so. Under this scenario, colonialism becomes something that happened to Indigenous peoples, in much the same way that small pox decimated the Shuswap, through no direct fault of the colonizers. Colonization is not understood as something that also produces white settlers and their entitlement to the land, and the most settlers can be guilty of is not understanding the historical situation in which they haplessly wandered. What this narrative leaves out, of course, is ongoing settler violence and its source in an ongoing white supremacist colonial project."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The result of inquests that ignore colonialism is that they simply repeat it, as Razack highlights:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Ross's death and the subsequent inquest was a wastershed moment that brought the development of a First Nations Health Liaison Program. The inquest identified a serious communications issue between First Nations people and police and hospital personnel, and it recommended the development of the liaison program and cross-cultural training. The latter never got off the ground, and the liaison program took ten years before it was funded in 1999, one year before Paul Alphonse met his death in the same hospital. It was defunded two years later."</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Medicalizing colonial violence</strong></p>
<p>Central to the displacement of blame from the colonial state is the medicalization of Indigenous death. If addiction in general is decontextualized and blamed on individual weakness, in the colonial context this serves to ignore the legacy of residential schools and distract from ongoing poverty and police violence:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Medical knowledge production is key to the end result of attributing death to Indigenous pathological frailty rather than to police brutality…Inquests begin from the premise that police force is necessary, and participate in the naturalization of practices of extreme force through the production of the Indigenous body as a body that only extreme force can control…The inquest transforms the colonial condition into a medial one, legitimizing the violence that is performed at the police station, on the streets, and in the hospital, wherever settlers encounter Indigenous people and demarcate between the human and less than human through acts of violence described as help."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul Alphonse survived residential school only to die with broken ribs and a boot mark on his chest. But through the inquiry into his death the role of colonial violence on Indigenous bodies -- including problems with alcohol that are rooted in colonialism -- was replaced with the challenges he posed as an alcoholic. As Razack summarizes,</p>
<blockquote><p>"The inquiry legitimizes settler colonialism and produces settlers as caring, civilized, and modern, persons with the moral authority and knowledge to save Indigenous peoples from themselves. Indigenous suffering becomes something non-Indigenous people will ameliorate, and public discourse shifts from land claims to rescue. At the inquiry's end, a metaphorical genocide is accomplished. There are no ‘Indians' left, only alcoholics."</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Sensitivity training vs anti-colonial struggle</strong></p>
<p>As Razack highlights, recommendations often reduce a colonial relationship to mere cultural differences, where notions of Indigenous culture are narrowly defined and removed from rights to the land:</p>
<blockquote><p>"There is hardly an inquest or inquiry that does not include a recommendation for cultural sensitivity training for white and non-Indigenous polite officers…The question Why don't things change?, is a question that requires us to reconsider whether the problem really is simply one of cultural misunderstanding. If constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger, the two police officers who drove Neil Stonechild to the outskirts of town where he froze to death, had a better understanding of Indigenous cultures, would they have done what they did?...Colonialism, as an ongoing material project entailing the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, produces, even as it relies upon, the notion of humanity and sub-humanity that circulates throughout the cases discussed in this book."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like <em><a href="http://www.socialist.ca/node/2834" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition</a></em>, by Dene scholar Glen Coulthard, <em>Dying From Improvement</em> is essential reading to understand colonialism's tactical variations and ongoing resistance. The campaign for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women has outlasted the Harper government and pushed the Trudeau government to announce an inquiry, and there are <a href="http://www.socialist.ca/node/2976" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ongoing demands</a> for the inquiry to involve the families themselves and address the systemic factors driving colonial violence. </p>
<p>As Razack concludes:</p>
<blockquote><p>"If we start with the reality of an ongoing colonialism, we can better reflect on the inhumanity that such a project requires. Then an only then will we be able to reject the fantasy of settler civility and refuse the game of improvement. Instead, we can work for Indigenous sovereignty and towards the relations of respect it necessarily installs. To develop relationships of genuine reciprocity with Indigenous peoples, we non-Indigenous peoples must embark on this anti-colonial journey."</p>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p><em>This article was originally published on </em><a href="http://socialist.ca/node/3009" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">socialist.ca</a><em> and is reprinted according to cc-license.</em></p>
</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/colonization">colonization</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/20018">police violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/state-violence">state violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/book-review">book review</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women">missing and murdered Indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/national-inquiry">national inquiry</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/indigenous-politics">Indigenous politics</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/sherene-razack">Sherene Razack</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/canadian-poitics">Canadian poitics</a></div></div></div>Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:28:01 +0000rabble staff123430 at https://rabble.cahttps://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/03/dying-improvement-exposes-politics-colonial-inquests-and-inquiries#commentsCinema Politica Waterloo screening of 'Concerning Violence'https://rabble.ca/whatsup/cinema-politica-waterloo-screening-concerning-violence
<div class="field field-name-field-eventstart field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Thursday, November 19, 2015 - <span class="date-display-range"><span class="date-display-start">00:00</span> to <span class="date-display-end">03:00</span></span></span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/concerning-violence.jpg?itok=f2RRLJV0" width="1180" height="600" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/arts-culture">Arts &amp; Culture</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/civil-liberties-watch">Civil Liberties Watch</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p>Cinema Politica Waterloo, WPIRG, and LSPIRG invite you to join us for the final film of our Fall 2015 Cinema Politica documentary series: CONCERNING VIOLENCE<br /> ------------------------<br /> TICKET INFO:</p>
<p> Tickets are available at the door only.</p>
<p> Admission to Cinema Politica Waterloo screenings are by donation, with a sliding scale suggestion of $5-10, though everyone is welcome and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.<br /> ------------------------<br /> FILM SYNOPSIS</p>
<p> Concerning Violence is both an archive-driven documentary covering the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, as well as an exploration into the mechanisms of decolonization through text from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon’s landmark book, written over 50 years ago, is still a major tool for understanding and illuminating the neocolonialism happening today, as well as the violence and reactions against it.</p>
</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-event-location field-type-location field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="location vcard" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<div class="adr">
<span class="fn" itemprop="name">Princess Twin Cinema</span>
<div class="street-address">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">46 King St. N.</span>
<span class="additional" itemprop="streetAddress">
N2J 2W8 </span>
</div>
<span class="locality" itemprop="addressLocality">
Waterloo </span>
, <span class="region" itemprop="addressRegion">ON</span>
<div class="country-name" itemprop="addressCountry">Canada</div>
<span class="geo"><abbr class="latitude" title="43.466580">43° 27' 59.688" N</abbr>, <abbr
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Ontario CA </div>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/documentary-screening">documentary screening</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/frantz-fanon">Frantz Fanon</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-histories">colonial histories</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-23 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/regions/ca/on">ON</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-event-contact-name field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Marta Berbes</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-event-organization field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.cinemapolitica.org/waterloo" target="_blank">Cinema Politica Waterloo</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-event-email field-type-email field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="mailto:mberbes@gmail.com">mberbes@gmail.com</a></div></div></div>Thu, 01 Oct 2015 11:43:47 +0000Marta Berbes120623 at https://rabble.cahttps://rabble.ca/whatsup/cinema-politica-waterloo-screening-concerning-violence#commentsChiefs of Ontario launch 'Who Is She' campaign to end violence against Indigenous womenhttps://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2015/09/chiefs-ontario-launch-who-she-campaign-to-end-violence-agains
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Brent Patterson</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/cpcwcyfwsaarhc2.jpg?itok=fGFBHk_w" width="1180" height="600" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p><em><a href="https://secure.rabble.ca/donate/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Chip in</a> to keep stories like these coming.</em></p>
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<p>The Council of Canadians has repeatedly called on the Harper government to support a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Indigenous women make up 4.3 per cent of the Canadian population, but they account for 16 per cent of murdered women and 11.3 per cent of missing women in Canada. Over the past 30 years, 1,026 Indigenous women have been murdered and 160 are missing.</p>
<p>As noted on their <a href="http://www.whoisshe.ca/" rel="nofollow">website</a>, "On Wednesday, September 9, Chiefs of Ontario launched our Who Is She campaign -- a fundraising effort aimed at creating a First Nations-led, community-driven process to eradicate violence against Indigenous women and girls." Beyond calling for a federal inquiry (now supported by all federal political parties except the Conservatives), the Chiefs of Ontario want a First Nations-led process as well.</p>
<p>Their rationale is, "Every Indigenous woman and girl should feel safe every time of every day in every place in Canada. Our families can’t wait for Ottawa to stop Indigenous women and girls from disappearing. We are planning our own process to bring safety to our peoples. ...We are looking to achieve truth and tangible solutions through a First Nations driven process to end violence in our communities."</p>
<p>The Council of Canadians believes an inquiry is needed to understand the root causes of this situation and to develop a national action plan. In October 2012, we added our support to the Sisters In Spirit Vigils -- A Movement for Social Change joint statement that highlights, "An inquiry would be a crucial step in implementing a comprehensive and coordinated national action plan."</p>
<p>On Sunday October 4, just two weeks before the federal election, we will be on Parliament Hill to join with the Families of Sisters in Spirit for a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/485337538297426/" rel="nofollow">10th anniversary Honouring our Sisters in Spirit</a> gathering.</p>
<p>Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says a national inquiry would help expose the colonial roots of violence against Indigenous women in Canada. CBC has <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/5-things-an-inquiry-into-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-could-achieve-1.2954279" rel="nofollow">reported</a>, "Bellegarde said the lingering impacts of the 'cultural genocide' of the residential school system and the imposition of the Indian Act on First Nations communities continue to 'really hurt indigenous peoples in Canada.'" About 150,000 Indigenous children in this country were forced to attend residential schools.</p>
<p>As referenced above, the federal New Democrats, Liberals and Greens agree that an inquiry is needed. The provincial premiers agree that a national inquiry is needed too. The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous people and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have also called for a national inquiry. It's only the Harper government that refuses to convene this inquiry.</p>
<p>For a Council of Canadians fact sheet on this issue, please click <a href="http://canadians.org/publications/factsheet-canada-needs-national-inquiry-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong><em>Further reading</em></strong></p>
<p><em></em><a href="http://canadians.org/blog/hamilton-chapter-holds-public-forum-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow">Hamilton chapter holds public forum on murdered and missing Indigenous women</a> (June 2015 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/win-regina-city-council-calls-inquiry-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow">WIN! Regina city council calls for inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women</a> (February 2015 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/st-johns-chapter-calls-inquiry-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow">St. John's chapter calls for inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women</a> (February 2015 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/peterborough-kawarthas-chapter-and-indigenous-allies-call-mmiw-inquiry" rel="nofollow">Peterborough-Kawarthas chapter and Indigenous allies call for MMIW inquiry</a> (February 2015 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/chapters-respond-call-inquiry-mmiw" rel="nofollow">Chapters respond to call for an inquiry on MMIW</a> (February 2015 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/barlow-supports-we-care-mmiw-campaign" rel="nofollow">Barlow supports the We Care #MMIW campaign</a> (December 2014 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/council-canadians-supports-call-inquiry-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow">Council of Canadians supports call for inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women</a> (March 2014 blog)<br /> <a href="http://canadians.org/blog/barlow-stands-solidarity-blockade-cn-rail-demanding-national-inquiry" rel="nofollow">Barlow stands in solidarity with blockade of CN Rail demanding national inquiry</a> (March 2014 blog)</p>
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</p></div></div></div>Tue, 29 Sep 2015 14:43:04 +0000Brent Patterson120551 at https://rabble.caPope Francis shares message of solidarity and tolerance on U.S. visit https://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/09/pope-francis-shares-message-solidarity-and-tolerance-on-us-visit
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous Rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/us-politics">US Politics</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/political-action">Political Action</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/francis_0.jpg?itok=gBVAcGL5" width="1180" height="600" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p><em>Please support our coverage of democratic movements and <a href="https://secure.rabble.ca/membership/signupNEW.php" rel="nofollow">become a supporter of </a></em><a href="https://secure.rabble.ca/membership/signupNEW.php" rel="nofollow">rabble.ca</a>.</p>
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<p>Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the 78-year-old Argentinian known to the world as Pope Francis, made his first trip to the United States this week, bringing his uniquely progressive papal perspective. Almost a quarter of the U.S. population identifies as Catholic, but as a global religious leader, the Pope's influence extends far beyond the Catholic community. The Pope has been frank in his criticism of much of the core of U.S. society: capitalism, consumerism, war and the failure to confront climate change. Pope Francis is widely adored, but his visit is also not without controversy, as he maintains age-old Catholic dogma regarding women in the priesthood, contraception and abortion. He also has provoked the ire of many Indigenous people, as he reopens wounds inflicted during the violent Spanish colonization of California more than two centuries ago.</p>
<p>When he became Pope, Francis surprised many, shunning the typical trappings of the highest position in the Catholic Church. He chose to reside in the Vatican's guest quarters instead of the Papal Apartments in the ornate Apostolic Palace. He wears simple white vestments instead of the gilded robes of his predecessors. He rode the bus on his trips through Rome. It became apparent that this Pope was walking the talk, as the first pope from the global south and the first non-European since a Syrian held the post in 741. He chose the name, Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, the early 13th-century cleric who embraced a life of poverty and revered nature.</p>
<p>Pope Francis made clerical history last May with the release of a papal encyclical on the environment and climate change, which he called, in Latin, Laudato Si, meaning, "Praise Be to You." He took those words from his namesake Saint Francis, and opened the encyclical with the words:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life. ... This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Laudato Si was the Pope's clarion call to action to confront climate change. Woven throughout is a harsh critique of capitalism. Take just one paragraph from the 40,000-word encyclical:</p>
<blockquote><p> "The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earlier this summer, in Bolivia, the Pope said, "An unfettered pursuit of money rules." Quoting an early Catholic theologian, he added, "This is the 'dung of the devil.'"</p>
<p>In that same speech in Bolivia, a majority Indigenous nation, Pope Francis also said: "Many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God. ...</p>
<p>Despite his apology, Pope Francis moved ahead with his plans to canonize an 18th-century Catholic missionary, Junipero Serra, who built the Catholic missions along the California coast, from Mexico to San Francisco.</p>
<p>Valentin Lopez is the chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. He's been leading efforts to oppose Pope Francis' decision to canonize Junipero Serra. "We've actually written six letters to Pope Francis," Lopez told us on the <em>Democracy Now!</em> news hour. The Indians, he said, "were a slave labour force for the missions. If they ran away, they would send out the soldiers to capture them and bring them back, and they would be whipped repeatedly, sometimes for up to a month." Rape, pillage, forced labor and, perhaps above all else, disease transmitted by the Spanish colonizers wreaked genocide. Lopez continued, "At the beginning of the mission period, there were 30,000 Ohlone Indians. That's Monterey to San Francisco. At the end of the mission period, there were less than 100. In total, over 150,000 California Indians died under this system that Junipero Serra developed."</p>
<p>An immigrant's son, Pope Francis has championed refugees around the world. He wanted to come to this country not by plane, as he ultimately did, but on foot. He said, "To enter the United States from the border with Mexico would be a beautiful gesture of brotherhood and support for immigrants." His message of solidarity and tolerance is sorely needed in this presidential campaign season full of anti-immigrant hate.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church, like all religions, is rife with contradictions. Yet Pope Francis seems intent on forging a new, progressive path.</p>
<p><em>Amy Goodman is the host of </em>Democracy Now!<em>, a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,300 stations. She is the co-author, with Denis Moynihan, of </em>The Silenced Majority, <em>a</em> New York Times <em>bestseller. <em>his column was first published on </em><a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_peoples_pope_in_the_land_of_the_dollar_20150923" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">TruthDig</a><em>.</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeophotos/21041883154/in/photolist-y4p9LS-jBVjNL-yZzRYu-eVC4R4-jBTgur-rhXJBV-peRDpJ-pUqJmg-peQZsm-oVqoZC-yKVdxL-yKVHJQ-yKxWJc-yKsgaU-y634A1-yKsQ5E-s6Smnz-yJZKiu-z3SF6R-qwVvjJ-qx49uZ-edqcdq-z1CsoF-yZC9M1-z1dUvj-yHSfBn-iKAN5X-e2ZC8c-qNNcD7-yEjD85-ysWSP4-ysQzsJ-xNqGy7-ysQZgf-ysWNZa-ysQGAG-yKsvMp-iTKcm2-yFFZTA-yWVDpi-y1Q8Km-na4Z1p-oqyJWW-oqyzxr-oH49iF-oGMs8M-oqyK9E-oqyoKL-oqz3YM-oF2jKE" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Julian Ortiz/flickr</a></em></em></p>
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</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5912">Climate Change</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous rights</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/26213">U.S. politics</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/progressive-movements">progressive movements</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/pope-francis">Pope Francis</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/38364">Amy Goodman</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/bios/denis-moynihan">Denis Moynihan</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">September 24, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/07/children-fleeing-violence-face-cruel-immigration-system-us" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Children fleeing violence face cruel immigration system in U.S.</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The U.S. is experiencing a failure of economic globalization and foreign policy, amplified by failed, stagnant immigration policies. The latest victims are children seeking safety across its borders.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/wings/2015/09/telling-pope-vision-women-inclusive-catholic-church">Telling the Pope: A vision for a women-inclusive Catholic Church</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">At a conference titled Women in the Catholic Church: What Francis Needs to Know, feminist theologians and ecumenical leaders discuss women&#039;s roles in Catholicism.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/dennis-gruending/2015/07/pontiffs-grand-message-pope-francis-calls-spiritual-and-envi" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pontiff&#039;s &#039;grand message&#039;: Pope Francis calls for spiritual and environmental revolution</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Pope Francis has issued an encyclical message that calls for spiritual and environmental revolution to meet the crisis posed by climate change.</div></div></div>Fri, 25 Sep 2015 01:36:24 +0000rabble staff120475 at https://rabble.caCanada's contribution to British colonial violence in Kenyahttps://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/yves-engler/2015/09/canadas-contribution-to-british-colonial-violence-kenya
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Yves Engler</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/mount_kenya.jpg?itok=Dmw8GtC7" width="1180" height="600" alt="Photo: Mary Beth Koeth/flickr" title="Photo: Mary Beth Koeth/flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p><em>Like this article? rabble is reader-supported journalism. <a href="https://secure.rabble.ca/donate/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Chip in</a> to keep stories like these coming.</em></p>
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<p>Over the weekend a memorial was unveiled to victims of British colonial violence in Kenya. Paid for by London, the monument in Nairobi grew out of London's 2013 apology to the Mau Mau, which included some compensation to 5,000 victims of British policy who pursued justice in London court.</p>
<p>Britain's small step towards atoning for its colonial past is an opportunity to explore Canada's contribution to this brutal period, which was an offshoot of Ottawa's long-standing endorsement of colonialism Africa.</p>
<p>In 1952, the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest ethnic group, launched an anti-colonial struggle and over the next eight years the British would employ horrific violence in a bid to suppress what became known as the "Mau Mau Uprising." The British detained most of the 1.5 million Kikuyu in camps and fortified villages. Thousands of prisoners were tortured to death or died from malnutrition and disease and in some camps most children perished. Tens of thousands of Kenyans were killed by British forces.</p>
<p>Compared to the vast African loss of life, only 32 European civilians among the 30,000 white settlers were killed by the Mau Mau. More settlers died in car accidents during this period. The British and Canadian press, however, focused their coverage on lurid stories detailing purported Mau Mau violence. On a number of occasions, the uprising in Kenya was brought up in the Canadian House of Commons, but External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson said little.</p>
<p>As they unleashed terrible violence in Kenya, Ottawa strengthened the British military, which had been weakened during the Second World War. In 1953, Canada gave the Royal Air Force 370 "top-of-the-line" F-86 Sabre fighter Jets built at Canadair's plant in Montreal. The planes cost $71 million ($600 million today) with the U.S. footing 30 per cent of the bill.</p>
<p>Several squadrons of Royal Air Force bombers dropped 50,000 pounds of bombs on Mau Mau forest hideouts. It's almost certain that some of the British pilots were trained in Canada as part of the Second World War British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the post-1949 NATO Air Training Plan, which saw the Royal Canadian Air Force train 5,500 pilots and navigators largely from Britain and France.</p>
<p>Some 55,000 British troops fought in Kenya, along with many battalions of the King's African Rifles from other parts of East Africa. They employed a great deal of weaponry, some of which originated in Canada. In the last decade of European colonialism in Africa, Canada delivered a huge amount of weaponry to the colonial powers through NATO's Mutual Aid Program. Between 1950 and 1958, Ottawa donated $1.53 billion ($8 billion today) in "aid" to NATO countries. The deliveries included anti-aircraft guns, military transport vehicles, ammunition, minesweepers, communications and electronic equipment, armaments, engines and fighter jets.</p>
<p>Canada also had men on the ground involved in the colonial violence in Kenya. Former RCMP officer John Timmerman served as assistant commissioner of police in Kenya during the Mau Mau insurgency. Between 1951 and 1955, Timmerman helped reorganize the police force and oversaw Nairobi's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). In October 1952, Timmerman oversaw the arrest of Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become Kenya's independence leader.</p>
<p>A July 1954 <em>Ottawa Citizen</em> article headlined "Terror Shadows Kenya Beat" reported "a Canadian just back from three years' police work among the Mau Mau of Kenya says the terrorists are the most savage and bestial killers in the world." Timmerman's claim may represent what a Freudian psychologist would call a "projection." Kenyan historian Bethwell Allan Ogot puts forth a different -- and considering what's been abundantly documented -- more plausible account of the RCMP officer's actions. "Beating of suspects to obtain evidence was rampant especially in Nairobi where Mr. John Timmerman, the notorious C.I.D. Chief (the Himmler of Kenya as he was called) and his henchman G. Heine presided over the torture chambers." In <em>Imperial Reckoning</em> Caroline Elkins also compares the CID to the secret police in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. "The Criminal Investigation Department… were effectively the colony's Gestapo, according to one member of the force."</p>
<p>At CID-operated centres, a favoured interrogation method was to hold a man upside down with his head in a bucket of water and ram sand into his rectum. In a bid to spread fear, men were raped with knives, snakes and scorpions while women were gang-raped or had their breasts mutilated with pliers.</p>
<p>A former white settler who was a member of the Kenya Regiment explained:</p>
<blockquote><p>"We would go and pick up a few of the filthy pigs and bring them to one of the interrogation centers set up by the CID. These were the hard-core scum, the ones who wouldn't listen to anyone and [were] causing trouble. So we would give them a good thrashing. It would be a bloody awful mess by the time we were done. … never knew that a Kuke [Kikuyu] had so many brains until we cracked open a few heads."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Timmerman carried out British policies, his post-Kenya rise through the ranks suggests his actions found support in Ottawa. A Canadian Intelligence Corps officer in Europe prior to Kenya, afterwards Timmerman led the security and intelligence liaison at External Affairs, which included the politically sensitive task of making sure External Affairs officials were not spying or acting on behalf of foreign states. Then Timmerman became the first RCMP officer ever appointed head of a Canadian mission, serving as consul general in Chicago in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Should Canada apologize for its role in these atrocities?</p>
<p><em>Author of the just-released </em>Canada In Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation, <em>Yves Engler will be speaking across the country in the lead-up to the election. For information: Yvesengler.com</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/46479192@N00/13546000384/in/photolist-mCZBXK-mD1MYL-mD1vmr-mD2bps-mD2xLf-mD1ntV-mD1cAP-mCZUwt-mD1gN4-mD2gs3-mD2aJu-mD1PWx-mD2Xjh-mD2QUy-mD15SD-mD1i88-mD1koF-mD15ik-mD17AZ-mD2bWj-mD1188-mD1Akz-mCZCnK-mD2zas-mD1pdK-mD2fq3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mary Beth Koeth/flickr</a></em></p>
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</p></div></div></div>Wed, 16 Sep 2015 14:41:20 +0000yves engler120274 at https://rabble.caJustice for Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and trans peoplehttps://rabble.ca/multimedia/2015/02/justice-indigenous-women-girls-two-spirit-and-trans-people
<div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">February 13, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/node-images/memorial_march_0_0.jpg" width="639" height="412" alt="Photo: yaokcool/flickr" title="Photo: yaokcool/flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-connected-story field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/columnists/2015/02/roundtable-on-gendered-colonial-violence-part-two">A roundtable on gendered colonial violence: Part two </a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-summary field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Four Indigenous women leaders discuss gendered colonial violence in the lead up to the Annual Women&#039;s March on February 14.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/colonialism">colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-women">indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/gendered-violence">gendered violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/womens-memorial-march">women&#039;s memorial march</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women">missing and murdered Indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/settler-colonialism">settler colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/mmiw-0">#MMIW</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/gendered-colonial-violence-roundtable">gendered colonial violence roundtable</a></div></div></div>Thu, 12 Feb 2015 23:32:21 +0000rabble staff116102 at https://rabble.caA roundtable on gendered colonial violence: Part two https://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/02/roundtable-on-gendered-colonial-violence-part-two
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous Rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/anti-racism">Anti-Racism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/feminism">Feminism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/mmiw_feb14_2015_0.jpg?itok=PRPQLs-A" width="1180" height="600" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p>On Wednesday, we introduced a roundtable with four Indigenous family and community members who are leading the calls for justice for Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, and trans people. Bridget Tolley, Zhaawanongnoodin (Colleen Cardinal), Carol Martin and Audrey Huntley continue the conversation today on what they envision as meaningful, community-led solutions to the ongoing reality of gendered colonial violence. As renowned Indigenous feminist Lee Maracle <a href="http://nationsrising.org/itendshere-the-full-series/" rel="nofollow">writes</a>, "It is not simply about 'ending violence,' the violation is the colonial order."</p>
<p>You can read the introduction and Part 1 of the roundtable <a href="http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/02/this-system-hasnt-killed-me-yet-roundtable-on-gendered-colonial-violence" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>There have been increasing calls for a national inquiry, as well as accompanying dialogue about the usefulness of a national inquiry whose terms are set by the state. Dr. Sarah Hunt of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation, for example, has <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/tina-fontaines-death-shows-how-little-is-being-done-for-indigenous-women/article20138787/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">written</a>, "While the government's refusal to hold an inquiry clearly demonstrates its inability to take our lives and our deaths seriously, this is not necessarily the route to real change." You have spent years advocating for a national inquiry but have also expressed its limitations. Can you talk more about this?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Audrey:</strong> It depends on who is calling for a national inquiry. With some allies who we had been asking to support this demand years ago, frankly it annoys me that it took so long. Also mainstream calls from political parties did not come until a time when we, basically frustrated with the sham provincial inquiry in B.C., were no longer even making the demand.</p>
<p>I think the increasing calls from within our community for an inquiry arise from a need for the severity of the violence to be recognized. People are in a lot of pain and an inquiry would counter the trauma of societal indifference that compounds family members' grief. That being said, we know that the state has no interest in ending the violence. In fact, it is in the state's interest that we disappear. Ultimately, I don't think a politics of recognition will lead to deep change. I prefer to keep building community capacity on the ground and to work to foster the resurgence of cultural traditions and connectedness to the land.</p>
<p>It's unfortunate that the question of an inquiry gets framed by media as if it's the end and be all, or it's that and nothing else. We know the root causes already and there are plenty of recommendations from previous studies that have yet to be implemented. And we should still have an inquiry and it should be led by family members and involve getting their demands for answers on unsolved cases met, reopening cases, sharing police files etc. And that should not exclude immediate action on providing access to safe housing, education and employment, and more shelters to reduce the extreme poverty and vulnerability faced by many Indigenous women.</p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> You cannot leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution. We already have over 50 reports and 700 recommendations and very few have been implemented. Even the B.C. provincial missing women's inquiry had 63 recommendations and they only implemented three of those recommendations. How many more reports and roundtables do we need? We need action and we need to actually implement the recommendations. I do think a public inquiry might help, but only if it will lead to something concrete for our women. But if we are going to spend millions of dollars on a national public inquiry and then say, "oh we have no money," then spend the money to actually do something.</p>
<p>The families are begging Native Women's Association of Canada and Assembly of First Nations for help, but they don't help us. Now they are calling for a public inquiry but it's hard to have any trust in these organizations or the government. I think of those marching for a quarter century in the West -- that's a good three generations! I am 55 years old and I would like to see some change before I die. But I don't know if that change will come from a public inquiry. I think we need to give the family members more voice and let them speak for themselves. Every family has a different story and only they can tell their own story. When family members have a chance to talk and to meet each other and feel one another's support -- that is how we heal.</p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> I can see the urgency and desperation in the call for the inquiry -- families want answers -- but I believe it will not stop the murders or disappearances of Indigenous women, two-spirit, and trans people. Asking the state to investigate itself is futile. The state will never admit they were racist in the making of Canada. In fact, Canada still hides the truth of how this country is financed through the manipulation of the treaty-making process in order to access Indigenous land and resources.</p>
<p>A proper inquiry would reveal that police forces are killing and assaulting Indigenous women, as indicated in a recent Human Rights Watch <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/canada-mounties-abuse_n_2681117.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a>. A national inquiry may lead to the Canadian state being held accountable in International Criminal Court for the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. But the government doesn't care; it is already faced with reports, research, testimony, recommendations, tribunals and evidence. I also question how an inquiry would be enacted: who will oversee it, who are they accountable to, how much money would be set aside, and who stands to benefit financially from an inquiry? Will families of missing and murdered women be involved?</p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> The <a href="https://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/non-participation-sham-inquiry/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">provincial missing women's inquiry</a> was a stage performance. They did not recognize our presence, never mind our voices. We held no position within their judicial system and we were not recognized as human beings capable of standing up to the injustice that took place -- and still takes place -- within their courtrooms. This reflects racism but still we are supposed to believe in this judicial system! Racism is conditioned, taught, and projected in society; it is a learned behaviour towards Indigenous women and girls where we are not valued as much as a non-Native person. Being Indigenous is the first strike against us, and then being a woman is a second strike. Living in poverty is another strike, and being an addict, etc. The more labels we have against us, the more strikes we have put against us.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Responses from successive governments have been policing and surveillance measures, for example increased policing budgets, more policing coordination, DNA databases etc. There is a consistent tension around the role of police in addressing racialized and/or colonial gender violence: advocating long-term abolition of police and prisons, but also sometimes the call for more appropriate police involvement in specific situations. What are your thoughts on this?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> In most of our cases the police are the problem. Like in my case, I am accusing the police directly of killing my mother and the police have not even spoken to me. They are hiding and covering up their mistakes. So how are we supposed to have any trust in the police? The government are our abusers and the government hires the police, so obviously we aren't going to get any solutions from our own abusers. The police and government are just worried about increasing their own budgets. I am so tired of saying this in all the meetings with all the leaders and the chiefs: the police can't help us find a solution and this is why nothing is getting better.</p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> The state responding to violence against Indigenous women by ramping up police presence and building more jails perpetuates the cycle of violence. The RCMP already has been identified as being perpetrators of violence towards Indigenous women. Prisons are institutionalizing Indigenous people and have become the new residential school system. The government is going to war on Indigenous people using the police as their enforcers to serve and protect their oil, land, and resource assets. I have only had bad experiences with the police when I need protection. I would hold out on calling the police for help because I feel I am more likely to be subject to racial profiling, assault, or being criminalized or shot by them than being helped.</p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> I have a lack of belief in the law, justice institutions, and police system here in this occupied land. Some people believe it is a great system but I think that the system has been corrupted by racism and classism. Unlike upper-class people, Indigenous people have a lot of difficulty believing there is fairness before the law. The police are literally a gun in the establishment's hand and racism is used as a weapon by the wealthy to increase their profits.</p>
<p><strong>Audrey:</strong> I come from abolitionist organizing. No More Silence has been well positioned to express a fundamental critique of policing institutions and state complicity in violence as we are not dependent on state funding. I do see, however, that folks working in Aboriginal agencies assist people in surviving the brutalization of the system every day and may be in more direct contact with police than we have to be. </p>
<p>If police involvement in anti-violence work actually led to less police brutalization of vulnerable people by the police I would be all for it, but I don't see that happening in Toronto or anywhere. Most recently, headlines romanticized an officer's abduction of an intoxicated woman from jail to rape her in private. Even judges have taken advantage of their positions of power to victimize Indigenous women and girls, and we see women dying in custody. In Toronto we go to police headquarters because a focus of our work has been to talk about impunity and the complicity of state institutions. We don't go there expecting them to change but rather in defiance and to assert our sovereignty in the face of their complicity.</p>
<p>The tension expresses itself most painfully, I think, in the dilemma of families with unanswered questions who want to know what happened to their loved ones. It is horrific to be dependent -- while in a place of shock and grief -- on an institution for answers that is hostile to your community and to you, and indifferent to the death of your loved one. It gets messy when people's hope for justice is equated with police action and colonizer sentencing. Again I look to strengthening community relationships and creating safe places where we can foster the resurgence of our cultural traditions. Hopefully that way we influence society as a whole and make it unacceptable to discount the lives of Indigenous women and girls.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Are there additional or alternative community-based solutions to state-based inquiries and policing initiatives that you envision or see in practice?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> I believe in community-based work. One movement that I became a part of and support wholeheartedly is <a href="http://www.itstartswithus-mmiw.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">#ItStartsWithUs</a>, a community-led grassroots initiative led by No More Silence - Toronto, Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Families of Sisters in Spirit. It has a tribute section for the missing and murdered Indigenous women with the words of families and loved ones, along with pictures and stories. It is important because all we see are police or media reports that are often poorly written, inaccurate or misleading.</p>
<p>I have found great empowerment from building community with Indigenous people and non-Indigenous settlers who are committed to understanding, listening and supporting. Not only is it important for settlers to understand how they are implicated in colonization on Indigenous land, but to also challenge mainstream media to do better when reporting about Indigenous women's deaths or disappearances, and to really understand that the women who have been murdered or gone missing meant the world to their loved ones and communities.</p>
<p>We also really need to do the work within ourselves to unlearn harmful attitudes like victim-blaming, slut-shaming, rape culture and homophobia. We should also challenge those around us in our families, schools, and workplaces. </p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> We must look at ourselves and learn from that and from each other. We all know racism is a projection of our fears onto another person and we must treat this disease of our society. We must understand it and acknowledge that it does exist; we can't hide it or camouflage it. The institutions in this country have been built on racism since the residential schools. And the racism of those institutions was internalized by individuals who were set up to become self-destructive. We must put more emphasis on the idea that it's all right to be different. We must understand that racism -- and all the "isms" -- grows from a hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, or class in our society.</p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> We, ourselves, have to break the cycle of violence. Within our families, we have to believe someone when they disclose something. The impacts of residential school have been severe and we are brought up to learn all the wrong things. But that is not the way. We have to teach our children to respect and love their mother and sister. We cannot expect that love and respect from colonial society, so we have to do it ourselves. Because we have been deliberately deprived of love, showing love is so important.</p>
<p><strong>Audrey:</strong> I look primarily to community-based solutions. For me, that means the #ItStartsWithUs project, which is a community-led database. It also means inter-generational relationship building, connecting with allies who understand that we work for decolonization, and practicing those teachings of love, kindness, humility, respect and re/connecting with the land.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What do you feel is the most pressing message or call to action with respect to justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls that is not being heard enough and needs to be amplified? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> We need to get to the roots of violence against Indigenous women and girls. This means exploring the ongoing systemic racism, genocide and violence against Indigenous women and girls. This "great and rich" country has taken many lives, and it is a legacy that Canadians can no longer ignore. Indigenous warriors will continue to bring forward our voices because we know how terribly wrong this system is. The weight of racism crushes my spirit. I also hear the silent screams of the many missing and murdered women who are screaming for justice. We are waiting for you to wake up to this reality that is a horror story with no ending.</p>
<p>Ask yourself: how could this violence continue with no intervention? You have to un-think the way society wants you think. Instead, question what you see and hear, and you will then understand what racism is and what it does to us. The daily challenges of racism tear us down and make us more vulnerable, which puts us at a much greater risk of violence and death. And the minute you understand how deep the roots of racism are, you are responsible to do something to change it. The future lies in your hand, in your voice, in your action to make those changes.</p>
<p><strong>Audrey:</strong> We need to centre the voices of those who are most vulnerable and experience the highest rates of violence: sex workers, trans and two-spirit peoples. I am not surprised that, despite knowing it will be struck down as unconstitutional, the Harper government would pass Bill C-36 just to pander to their most conservative electorate. Many women will be murdered through the enforcement of this legislation.</p>
<p>We should be standing with sex workers organizing against this bill and calling for an end to criminalization. It is really hard to see Indigenous women choosing to align themselves with such a reactionary government in their whorephobia. Sometimes they are not only shaming and stigmatizing sex workers, but also contributing to criminalization and loss of employment. This is also violence and should be called out. We should not tolerate the invibilizing of Indigenous women choosing to work as sex workers. I am working for decolonization and I think that includes decolonizing internalized colonizer thinking around sexuality and gender. It should include respect for those most affected, who are best situated to address their issues.</p>
<p>I have learned a lot from women and trans people in the trade who have pointed out that criminalization of sex work also hurts Indigenous people who are not in the sex trade. More surveillance and policing means more profiling, harassment, arrests and police violence towards all Indigenous women (especially trans and two-spirited women) who are stereotyped as sex workers as well as towards Indigenous men who live in the poor and working-class neighbourhoods that sex work strolls have been pushed into. The abolitionists don't mention that the enforcement is always in racialized, poor/working-class neighbourhoods like Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Why would we support increasing the burden of policing on all Indigenous people when we have solutions to the violence facing Indigenous sex workers (like housing, jobs, addiction services)?</p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> People need to listen to the families. We are calling for support and I do not know how much clearer we need to make it that we need help when our loved ones go missing. So people need to listen to the families when we say, "support the grassroots."</p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> The most pressing message is that it starts with us. Start looking at what we can do now; stop looking to the state to save us.</p>
<p><em>Harsha Walia (<a href="https://twitter.com/harshawalia" rel="nofollow">@HarshaWalia</a>) is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been a member of the February 14 Women's Memorial March Committee since 2006 and also been involved in grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist movements for over a decade.</em></p>
</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/colonialism">colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-women">indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/gendered-violence">gendered violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/womens-memorial-march">women&#039;s memorial march</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women">missing and murdered Indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/settler-colonialism">settler colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/mmiw-0">#MMIW</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/gendered-colonial-violence-roundtable">gendered colonial violence roundtable</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/bios/columnist/harsha-walia">Harsha Walia</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">February 13, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/02/this-system-hasnt-killed-me-yet-roundtable-on-gendered-colonial-violence" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;This system hasn&#039;t killed me yet&#039;: A roundtable on gendered colonial violence </a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In advance of this year&#039;s 25th Women&#039;s Memorial March, Harsha Walia hosted a roundtable with four Indigenous women leaders who have been taking action against colonial gendered violence for decades.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/bwss/2014/02/their-spirits-live-within-us-february-14-womens-memorial-march-murdered-">&#039;Their spirits live within us&#039;: February 14 Women&#039;s Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In January 1991 a woman was murdered on Powell Street in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. Out of a sense of grief, hopelessness and anger the February 14 Women&#039;s Memorial March was ignited.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2012/02/nobody-cared-nobody-did-anything-normalization-violence-against-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;Nobody cared, nobody did anything&#039;: The normalization of violence against Indigenous women </a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Activist Audrey Huntley reflects on the shameful reality of the way in which violence against Indigenous women is normalized in our society, and describes movement-building across Canada.</div></div></div>Thu, 12 Feb 2015 22:38:48 +0000rabble staff116100 at https://rabble.ca'This system hasn't killed me yet': A roundtable on gendered colonial violence https://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/02/this-system-hasnt-killed-me-yet-roundtable-on-gendered-colonial-violence
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-22 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous Rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/politics-canada">Politics in Canada</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/issues/anti-racism">Anti-Racism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/issues/feminism">Feminism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/memorial_march_0.jpg?itok=nlQyhrwE" width="1180" height="600" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p>For the past 25 years, Indigenous elders, women, family and community members in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, unceded xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories, have marched to raise awareness about violence inflicted on the lives of women in this neighbourhood. This February 14, they will be joined by over a dozen other marches across <a href="https://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/national/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Turtle Island</a>, making this one of the most widespread and longest-running marches in recent Canadian history.</p>
<p>Nearly 1,200 Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada over the past <a href="http://aptn.ca/news/2014/05/01/opposition-renew-calls-national-inquiry-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-girls/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">30 years</a>. According to researcher Maryanne Pearce, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/craig-and-marc-kielburger/aboriginal-women_b_4638968.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">24.8 per cent</a> of all missing and murdered women in Canada are Indigenous women despite making up less than two per cent of the total population. Statistics are, of course, wholly inadequate when conveying the scope of violence. Gendered violence is embedded within settler-colonialism: in racist and heteropatriarchal laws such as the Indian Act, in policies of child apprehension which target Indigenous families, in the practices of locking up Indigenous women and youth at alarming rates, in the theft of Indigenous lands that disproportionately displaces and impoverishes Indigenous women, and in the genocidal attempts to annihilate Indigenous laws through the very bodies of Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people that embody and enact Indigenous sovereignty.</p>
<p>Tara Williamson, Anishinaabekwe/Nehayowak musician and college professor, notes: "The system and most Canadians don't give a shit about you, how strong and talented you are, how hard you've worked, or where you live. If you are an Indigenous woman, you are a prime target for colonial violence." </p>
<p>Given the state and settler society's perpetuation and complicity in colonial gendered violence, Valentine's Day has become a powerful day to show love and "<a href="https://womensmemorialmarch.wordpress.com/2014/12/27/march/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">express compassion, community, and caring</a>" for Indigenous women through Women's Memorial Marches. As <a href="http://nationsrising.org/from-outrage-to-radical-love/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Siku Allooloo</a>, an Inuk/Taino from Denendeh, has written, "Love and respect are the currencies of our relationships… Love is our life force. It is the most healing, regenerative, empowering resource we have to draw upon. And, even more, it compels us to action."</p>
<p>Over the past two months, I had the deep honour of hosting a roundtable with four powerful and persistent Indigenous women leaders from across the country who have been taking loving action. Bridget Tolley, an Algonquin grandmother from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, is a cofounder of Families of Sisters in Spirit in Ottawa. Zhaawanongnoodin (Colleen Cardinal) is a Plains Cree woman from Saddle Lake First Nation who also organizes with the grassroots volunteer group Families of Sisters in Spirit. In addition, I spoke with Carol Martin, a Nisga'a and Gitxsan victim-services worker at the Downtown Eastside Women's Center and long-time member of Vancouver's February 14 Women's Memorial March Committee. Audrey Huntley, a documentary filmmaker, researcher and organizer with No More Silence in Toronto of mixed settler and Indigenous (Anishnawbe) ancestry, also joined the roundtable.</p>
<p>Below is Part 1 of the roundtable; Part 2 of the roundtable will be published on February 13 <a href="http://rabble.ca/category/tags/gendered-colonial-violence-roundtable" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>All of you have dedicated almost a decade or longer to the issue of justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. What brought you to the work of memorializing and honouring the lives of stolen sisters? Given how emotionally intensive it is to intimately, let alone publically, grieve and organize for justice in situations of violent death, how do you keep going?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> Violence has always been a part of my life. Sexual and physical abuse began for me from being placed, along with my two older sisters, in a non-Indigenous household as part of the '60s Scoop. We fled that home and eventually found our parents but sadly a year later, on July 25, 1990, my eldest sister Gina (Charmaine Desa) was murdered in a downtown Edmonton park. I was 17 years old at the time.</p>
<p>The front page of the <em>Edmonton Sun</em> had a photograph of her body. It showed 4-5 detectives standing over her lifeless body and you could see her leg from under the cloth covering her. When you turned the page of the newspaper you could see a coroner taking a body bag out of the park on a stretcher with an image description of the park being "notorious for drug dealing and prostitution." These images stayed in my mind.</p>
<p>I saw similar images and messages repeated in the media every time they found a body of an Indigenous woman. Little attention was given to the killers of Indigenous women. Instead mainstream media described the woman as being "high risk," which to them meant she was street-involved and using drugs or alcohol. I did not consider my sister to be high-risk or deserving to be beaten to death; this is victim blaming.</p>
<p>From 1997-2005 there were bodies of Indigenous women constantly being found in fields, ditches, and hiking trails around Edmonton. <a href="http://www.lastlinkontheleft.com/e2000kare.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">As far as I know</a>, there were no killers caught for most of the women killed during that period of time. One of those women found was my sister-in-law Lynn Minia Jackson. I was married to her brother, and she had lived with us for a brief time in 1991 and we briefly had contact with her again in 1997. When one woman in your family is murdered it is unimaginable; when two women are murdered it is alarming.</p>
<p>So I keep doing this work because it has impacted my life. My interest is in creating awareness not only about missing and murdered Indigenous women but also the deeply entrenched systemic racism that is built within Canada's government policies and media. These institutions continue to deliberately lie about the violence that Indigenous people have experienced and continue to experience even though they are complicit in the violence.</p>
<p>I can trace the violence against Indigenous women right back to forcing Indigenous people onto tracts of land, appropriating their resources, and assuming control of their lives, education, and health. This all impacted women in my family: the violence my biological mother experienced in Blue Quills Residential School, the trauma of having my sisters and I removed from her, the violence we experienced in our adoptive home, and the murder of my sister Gina (Charmaine Desa) at the age of 20. Maybe Gina (Charmaine Desa) would have been a teacher or veterinarian, I don't know, but I know she wanted a better life for herself and her children. She dreamed about a life free from violence and we often talked about raising our children without the violence that we ourselves experienced. And so I am dedicating my life to making sure my sister's death was not in vain and that people understand the historical context of violence against Indigenous women in Canada.</p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> I never thought I would be political and fighting for missing and murdered women. I got involved for accountability and justice when my mother was killed in 2001 on the reserve by a Quebec police cruiser. It took me over a year just to get a copy of the police report. The Sûreté du Québec never admitted anything. Since the beginning, even the autopsy report was inaccurate. They said that we had identified the body, but that was not true because we were never allowed to even see the body. And then we found out that the lead investigating officer was actually the brother of the police officer who was driving the car that hit my mother! This is such an obvious conflict of interest and I believe it is one big cover-up. I want an independent investigation into my mother's killing but in 2010, the province of Quebec refused me.</p>
<p>To try and get justice for my mother I got involved with the Native Women's Association of Canada Sisters in Spirit campaign. I wanted to do something for my mother, whose anniversary was on October 5. October 4 marked the anniversary of release of the first big Amnesty International Stolen Sisters report, which came out in 2004. So we picked October 4 as the date and the first Sisters in Spirit vigil was held on Parliament Hill in 2006. Since then, this annual vigil has spread everywhere and brought lots of awareness; last year there were over 200 vigils.</p>
<p>And then in 2010, Harper cut funding and the Native Women's Association of Canada was told that they could no longer organize the Sisters In Spirit campaign. They could not even use the name "Sisters in Spirit." That felt like we were being made invisible and disappeared again. The government might be able to take away funding but they do not have the authority to take our name, our sisters from us. So we became Families of Sisters in Spirit to make sure everyone knew and the government knew that we were here and not going anywhere.</p>
<p>It has been so hard and it's been so long. We live on donations and we use those donations to support families with food and gas money and to print out and put up posters. When I first started there was no Internet so I had to do all my work from phone. My phone bill was $500 a month. We try to support all the families as much as possible because we know what it's like to lose a loved one. In 2013, my own daughter and her friend went missing for one week. It was the hardest week of my life. I never thought I would be searching for my own daughter, but it happened to me. I was lucky, I was able to get the word out fast, I had lots of support, and my daughter and her friend came home safe. But if people didn't know me then maybe I wouldn't have had the same response. So I try to help other family members bring back their family members as fast as possible.</p>
<p>The reason I keep doing this is justice for my mom. And I do not want the same thing to happen to anyone else. I want justice for all the families. And it's the other families that keep me going too.</p>
<p><strong>Audrey:</strong> I found myself living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside when I returned to Turtle Island after living and organizing in European social justice movements for many years. It was a bit of a culture shock at first as I had been away for 18 years. I was really grateful to be welcomed so warmly into the community. At that time missing women posters were everywhere so I got involved with organizing the women's memorial march.</p>
<p>Ceremony is what allows me to keep doing this work. Doing the work in the absence of ceremony is dangerous, I think, and can be really damaging. I see those damaging dynamics in the lateral violence that occurs around this issue among organizers. It is painful work and a lot of trauma re-enactment can occur if folks do not have supports in place and are not practicing good self-care. No More Silence is lucky to have the guidance of Elder Wanda Whitebird; her sense of humour and kindness keeps us grounded.</p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> This work was not my intention but I started working in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and this is the direction it took me to. Working with women in the Downtown Eastside is like a reflection of my own life and my own struggles. I can relate to what women here are going through; especially the ongoing systemic racism and genocide that exists against Indigenous women. We are almost non-existent in this system.</p>
<p>My personal life and my work go hand in hand; without the two being connected I would not be able to do the work I do. Emotionally, spiritually and physically this work wears me down. It educates me, triggers me, moves me, exhausts me right down to my spirit and soul but still I move forward and it makes me stronger. Sometimes in moments of quiet, I find it difficult and I feel hopeless and cannot see above the horizon, but then the voices of the women who have died or who have gone missing carry loudly in my mind. It is their stories, their tears, their struggle, and it is with this memory that I continue to speak. It is for their lives that I do this work and it is them who I remember. And for me -- if this system hasn't killed me yet then it has made me stronger.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>What do you believe are the root causes of the violence of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Turtle Island? How is this colonial gendered violence reproduced by the government as well as within society in the responses, or lack thereof, to this crisis? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Audrey: </strong>Violence against Indigenous women that enabled land theft and displacement of the Indigenous population is an inherent part of the settler-colonial project. That's how Canada was built and continues to exist. Indigenous communities, in particular Indigenous women and children who are the centres of those communities, stand in the way of ongoing colonization of land and resources. Racism is the fuel that feeds the fire and it is at the heart of the societal indifference that is so hard for our community, and in particular for the family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, to bear. </p>
<p>While the last year has finally brought unprecedented media and public attention to the issue, the violence has not stopped and, in fact, may be increasing. This makes sense given the extractivist and austerity-focused agenda of the Harper government and the impacts that violence on the land has on Indigenous women particularly, and our community and society as a whole.</p>
<p><strong>Carol:</strong> I believe that racism and genocide is at the root of the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered women and girls. Society knows that the killing of one's soul little by little, day after day, will make us more vulnerable, therefore putting our lives at a higher risk. Racism tears down our insides so that no matter what we achieve we will never be up to their standards. Racism oppresses Indigenous women and girls, but it also binds the oppressors into telling lies until they themselves become prisoners of those lies. The oppressors cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they have committed.</p>
<p>As far as state and societal response to the violence against Indigenous women and girls -- it is rooted in racism. Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It is a self-centred falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we have a right to treat Indigenous women and girls in ways we would not want to be treated. Society and the state witness and hear about the racism and injustice and violence and heartache and death that is inflicted upon Indigenous women and girls, and still there is silence.</p>
<p><strong>Colleen:</strong> The root cause is the dehumanizing of Indigenous people though the making of Canada. The apartheid reserve system, the stealing of resources and land for profit, the miseducation and ignorance being taught in Canadian schools about Indigenous people -- it's all wrong! Canada is the problem. The Canadian plan was to keep us out of sight and out of mind, to assimilate us into becoming taxing-paying loyal citizens. Indigenous people recognize and see the problems with the system, but Canadians only have a limited understanding and do not value Indigenous people. Many are ignorant because the state has largely misled them about the controlling and managing of First Nations, Inuit and Metis affairs.</p>
<p><strong>Bridget:</strong> The main problem is that society believes racist stereotypes about us. They believe we are "drunks" and "bums" and all these things. They do not believe we are valuable. So when a young girl goes missing, there is no support to find her. When Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander went missing in my reserve of Maniwaki there was no big search parties. But when a baby lion went missing on the reserve, there were helicopters and search parties. It was unbelievable that the people on my own reserve barely responded to these two girls going missing and it still breaks my heart.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it all has to do with colonization; it has been like this for years and years. From the residential schools to the '60s Scoop, and now the children's aid societies -- it's still happening. I was in state care in Children Aid's Society and my Santa Clause every year was the Indian Agent. It is so wicked and it never ends.</p>
<p><em>Part 2 of the roundtable, discussing a national inquiry, government proposals to address this violence, and community-based alternatives as forms of Indigenous resurgence, will run on February 13 <a href="http://rabble.ca/category/tags/gendered-colonial-violence-roundtable" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Harsha Walia (<a href="https://twitter.com/harshawalia" rel="nofollow">@HarshaWalia</a>) is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been a member of the February 14 Women's Memorial March Committee since 2006 and also been involved in grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist movements for over a decade.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/97713303@N00/4357734515/in/photolist-7D5wDH-EYrFf-EYsxk-EYs88-7D9t2m-7D9wHu-7D5Ncz-7D5KQr-7D5K7p-7D8YNd-7D5bh6-7D8ZqU-7D93PC-7D9DAL-7D5vVH-EYta3-EYsFc-EYsJn-EYtXF-7D9jYU-7D9sfo-7D5DNg-AxpRV-61fCLL-AxqpU-AxqcZ-AxpWU-Axq6c-AxqkH-Axq8X-Axq2u-Axqhd-7D5d16-7D92So-7D5drT-7D92YQ-dURTdr-dURSzt-dUXswy-dUXrzE-7DbdE9-bu77Ue-7D7qjt-7DbeyN-7DbeR5-59UaGZ-2u3e5-2u3eh-5924J5-EYsqA-5TfBBi" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">yaokcool/flickr</a></em></p>
</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-rights">Indigenous rights</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/colonialism">colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/indigenous-women">indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/gendered-violence">gendered violence</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags-issues/womens-memorial-march">women&#039;s memorial march</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags-issues/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women">missing and murdered Indigenous women</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/colonial-violence">colonial violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/settler-colonialism">settler colonialism</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/mmiw-0">#MMIW</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/gendered-colonial-violence-roundtable">gendered colonial violence roundtable</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/category/bios/columnist/harsha-walia">Harsha Walia</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-story-publish-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">February 11, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/bwss/2014/02/their-spirits-live-within-us-february-14-womens-memorial-march-murdered-" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;Their spirits live within us&#039;: February 14 Women&#039;s Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item1-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In January 1991 a woman was murdered on Powell Street in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. Out of a sense of grief, hopelessness and anger the February 14 Women&#039;s Memorial March was ignited.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2013/02/when-do-we-stop-being-idle-demanding-action-missing-and-murdered-aboriginal-women">When do we stop being idle? Action needed on missing and murdered Aboriginal women</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item2-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Indigenous communities, together with their mainstream Canadian allies, march every Valentine&#039;s Day in support of their disappeared women.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3 field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2012/02/nobody-cared-nobody-did-anything-normalization-violence-against-indigenous-women" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">&#039;Nobody cared, nobody did anything&#039;: The normalization of violence against Indigenous women </a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-item3-desc field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Activist Audrey Huntley reflects on the shameful reality of the way in which violence against Indigenous women is normalized in our society, and describes movement-building across Canada.</div></div></div>Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:17:12 +0000rabble staff116054 at https://rabble.caOutrage to radical love: Will you stand with #ItEndsHere?https://rabble.ca/news/2014/03/outrage-to-radical-love-will-you-stand-itendshere
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Siku Allooloo</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2014/03/outrage-to-radical-love-will-you-stand-itendshere"><img src="https://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/itendshere-6-yelloworange.jpg?itok=3mAEkpoP" width="1180" height="600" alt="Graphic: Indigenous Nationhood Movement" title="Graphic: Indigenous Nationhood Movement" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><p><em>The <a href="http://nationsrising.org/tag/itendshere/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">#ItEndsHere: Confronting the Crisis of Colonial Gender Violence</a> series originally ran on Indigenous Nationhood Movement.</em></p>
<p><em>On March 7,</em><em> the Harper Conservative government released a special commission report that rejected the call for a national inquiry into violence against Indigenous women. Instead, they listed <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/Committee/412/IWFA/Reports/RP6469851/412_IWFA_Rpt01_PDF/412_IWFA_Rpt01-e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">16 recommendations in a report</a>, which said <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/no-call-for-national-inquiry-in-mps-report-on-aboriginal-women-1.2563854?cmp=rss" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">"that the status quo is fine…things should continue as is."</a> Although we are not surprised, our outrage at the continuing violence remains. In the <a href="http://nationsrising.org/tag/ItEndsHere" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">#ItEndsHere</a> series, we affirm our collective effort to look for strategies, dialogue and action within our own community. We appreciate your support and participation as we continue to pursue truth, justice, and freedom from colonial oppression and gender violence. In solidarity and with respect.</em></p>
<p>I've been in a building rage. I am outraged at the status quo, at the overwhelming rate of gender violence and murder suffered by Indigenous women and girls in this country. I am disgusted with the lived experience of that; of gender violence as a pervasive experience that the majority of Indigenous women and young girls face in various forms throughout our lifetimes.</p>
<p>I am fed up with living in a sexist, racist, exploitative society that ignores this crisis of violence or passively accepts it. I am tired of nobody knowing what to do, and the way it becomes an excuse for not doing anything. Many of our family members and close relations get stuck at not knowing how to support those of us who have been targeted. Maybe they're overwhelmed at the frequency of violence within our communities or they just lack the personal resources to deal with it. Whatever the reason, the failure to take action means that Indigenous women and girls continue to be assaulted, exploited, and murdered. It's not like anyone who has been violated knows what to do or how to handle the trauma and its terrorizing effects on our lives. But we are forced to find a way.</p>
<p>Barriers that keep us from directly addressing this crisis of violence seem endless. One point I hear debated is whether violence perpetrated against individual women who happen to be Indigenous is 'racially motivated.' Splitting hairs over women being targeted because of their skin colour, class or political views minimizes and distracts from the severity of the crisis. Whether each instance of violence is an overt act of racism is, to some extent, beside the point. The fact that society sees Indigenous women and girls as violable, as eligible targets of assault and domination, as "<a href="http://kwetoday.com/2014/02/28/mmiw-so-you-want-a-national-inquiry/" rel="nofollow">less than human</a>" or, as weak, isolated and defenseless is, to my mind, the heart of the issue.</p>
<p>This is a systemically enforced perspective. Canada was built on the forcible theft of Indigenous lands and the destruction of our societies, and through the disempowerment and desecration of Indigenous women, it continues to condone gender violence and genocide by failing to take action to end these epidemics. Men, regardless of race, economic class or educational background continue to exercise their privilege to abstain from directly engaging the issue of gender violence. Indigenous women's voices continue to go unheard. We remain both targeted and unsupported.</p>
<p>I am furious, disgusted and outraged, and I refuse to remain silent. I am tired of the rampant pacifism, willful ignorance and inaction that is prevalent in western society, in our families, in our own minds. "That's just the way it is" is not good enough. I refuse to accept that the majority of Indigenous women and girls will continue to experience sexualized violence both in childhood and repeatedly throughout our lifetimes. I refuse to accept that we just have to find ways of coping with all forms of violence, and that many of us cannot depend on the men in our lives, our relatives and partners, to stand alongside us, hear us, support us, and help to ensure our safety through their words and actions.</p>
<p><strong>Redefining ourselves</strong></p>
<p>Perhaps the crisis of gender violence points to the need to redefine what an Indigenous woman and girl is today. The dominant (and dominating) perspective toward Indigenous women -- filtered through racist, sexist, colonial lenses -- does not suit me and has nothing to do with who I really am. I do not know a single woman who is accurately depicted within these frames.</p>
<p>None of us deserves to be dominated, oppressed or violated.</p>
<p>Indigenous women and girls are strong, powerful, intelligent, beloved human beings. We are sacred. And we deserve to be treated with the utmost honour and respect. My sisters embody all of this and so much more -- and we will continue to redefine ourselves because we are dynamic and complex, creators and reflections of creation.</p>
<p>The dialogue we have generated together this week through the <a href="http://nationsrising.org/tag/itendshere/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">#ItEndsHere series</a> has deeply moved and inspired me. It has challenged me to think harder, to reconsider my priorities, and to commit myself to moving past the barriers that prevent me from actively creating change.</p>
<p>The more we talk about gender violence, the more I recognize how important an issue it is. Gender-based violence is a nexus, a concentration point that encompasses the full spectrum of colonial oppression. As Leanne Simpson says in her wise and eloquent piece <a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2014/03/itendshere-rebelling-against-colonial-gender-violence" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">posted earlier</a>, "this is why resurgence is about bodies and land." She rightfully insists that "we must build critically around gender violence in the architecture of our movements." Indigenous resurgence necessarily includes the revitalization of healthy interconnectedness between all genders; the restoration of balance, mutual support, and accountability. This must be our starting point.</p>
<p>Because we live in a society that normalizes violence, injustice and dysfunction, it might be difficult to imagine a reality based in systems of respect and mutual well-being. However, as Indigenous peoples we must remember that we actually come from such societies. We have laws that ensure respect and reciprocity, and we have ways of restoring balance. Protocols. Stories. Ceremonies.</p>
<p>Love and respect are the currencies of our relationships.</p>
<p>Indigenous societies are built on love that lifts up, that replenishes and acts to strengthen the vitality of our relations, including ourselves. Intentional relationships of mutual care, respect and nurturing are intrinsic to our values, laws and protocols, and I advocate that we draw on these in our collective efforts toward decolonization and ending gender violence in our communities.</p>
<p>I advocate for love because it is the most powerful, life-giving force and it is our greatest strength. Love is the reason our people have survived, the reason we fight to protect our lands and our future. Love is the source of our courage, it is what that enables the most disempowered to stand against genocide and destruction, though outnumbered, outgunned, and largely unsupported. Love is our life force. It is the most healing, regenerative, empowering resource we have to draw upon. And, even more, it compels us to action.</p>
<p>If we paid close attention to how deeply interconnected we are as a community, none of us would suffer in isolation. We would affirm the value of one another's lives, and find ways to care for one another -- all the way along -- in dialogue, support, solidarity and action. We would see that actively facing this reality would make us stronger, clearer, more supported and more capable of eliminating all forms of colonial destruction in our communities and our homelands. It's time for us to step up and do that. Many of us are taking a stand together, creating a line to put an end to gender violence. Will you stand with us?</p>
<p>#ItEndsHere</p>
<p><em>Siku Allooloo is an Inuk/Taino from Denendeh (Northwest Territories) and also a member of a large Dene Sųłiné family. She is part of a lineage of strong leaders and activists on all three sides, and she has a BA in Anthropology and Indigenous Studies from the University of Victoria. Follow her on Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/@quietninja_" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@quietninja_</a></em></p>
<p><em>This piece originally appeared on</em> <a href="http://nationsrising.org/from-outrage-to-radical-love/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Indigenous Nationhood Movement</a> <em>and is reprinted with permission</em>.</p>
<p><em>The </em><a href="http://nationsrising.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Indigenous Nationhood Movement</a><em> is a peoples' movement for Indigenous nationhood, resurgence and decolonization. They <em>are committed to eliminating all forms of violence within Indigenous communities, including violence based on gender and sexual identity and orientation.</em></em></p>
<p><em>rabble will be running select pieces from INM's #ItEndsHere series this week, <em>please view those <a href="http://rabble.ca/category/tags/itendshere" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. P</em>lease view the full series on INM <a href="http://nationsrising.org/itendshere-the-full-series/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</em></p>
</p></div></div></div>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 22:20:49 +0000rabble staff107416 at https://rabble.ca